Developing a novel dichoptic reading application for the treatment of amblyopia

Current amblyopia treatment research has focused on binocular dichoptic tasks instead of the typical patching treatment which has low compliance rates and long-term effectiveness. This study aimed to use another entertaining and important daily task, reading, to improve binocular vision in amblyopia. Here, we assessed the feasibility of a dichoptic e-book application as an alternative treatment for binocular vision in amblyopia. A prototype of the application was developed and uploaded onto tablets that were used for participant assessments. Participants read e-books in anaglyph red/green/black presentation which allowed for monocular and binocular contrast to be adjusted independently. Amblyopic and control participants were then tested on their reading speed and questioned about their comfort using the application. We found that participants read slower in the dichoptic presentation than in the control presentation, indicating that their visual systems were forced to integrate information from both eyes. In some cases, reducing the contrast of text seen by the fellow eye also increased the reading speed of amblyopes in accordance with current research on binocular training approaches. Following the testing sessions that produced these results, participant feedback from the comfort questions was implemented into an improved application model. Overall, this study demonstrated that amblyopes can read binocularly within the e-book application framework suggesting that it could be an effective treatment for amblyopia. Future steps in this research are focused on training amblyopes on reading in this application to improve their binocular vision.